Cutting Dinner To Pay For Lunch?

Would you cut dinner to pay for lunch?  It doesn’t make much sense, does it?  Unfortunately, our legislators in Washington D.C. are entertaining this  choice right now: they’re thinking about paying for Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR) by cutting the SNAP (food stamps) program! This would be the first time in the history of the program that Food Stamp benefits would be reduced. Should the bill that includes CNR pass in its current form, a family of four can expect their benefits to drop about $59 a month starting in October 2013.

CNR affects nutrition programs for children: the National School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program, the Summer Food Service Program, and the Afterschool Snack and Meal Program, among others. On a typical day during the 2008-09 school year, 31.3 million children in more than 99,000 schools and residential child care institutions participated in the school lunch program.

SNAP/Food Stamps provides monthly benefits that can be used to purchase food at grocery stores and farmers’ markets. 41.8 million people nation-wide participated in the Food Stamp program in July of 2010.

Do you think it’s a good idea to cut food stamps (dinner) to pay for CNR (school lunch)? To make your voice heard, visit the website of our friends at FRAC (Food Research and Action Center), where you can send an email to the White House.